Today we’d like to introduce you to Bonnie Rovics.
Bonnie, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I grew up in a large musical family, both of my parents are classical pianists and were music professors. Hosting musical gatherings with delicious food and a diverse audience was part of the course of my early years. I guess the easiest thing to say is I never grew out of my love of a well-run party, When we gather around food, music, and good conversation, everything seems to flow better, I like cultivating the whole experience of a good party.
In the 80’s to early 90’s, I worked in the non-profit sector as a fundraiser and later as a grant writer. The thing I loved to do the most organized benefit concerts and conferences, My innate love of organizing and hosting then brought me onto the team that organizes the Wake Up the Earth Festival in Jamaica Plain, MA. Wake Up the Earth is one of the largest and longest running street festivals in this part of Boston, having just celebrated its 40th anniversary, I am proud to say that I have been on this team for 20 years.
My primary role and the title is entertainment coordinator, I organize, book and run the main stages and some years a couple of the secondary stages. My father’s second (part-time) career in Dream Therapy exposed me to dozens of therapists, healers and wellness practitioners, through this world I studied massage and wellness, years before seeking professional training. Eventually, I went on to study at the East-West Institute of Alternative Healing and became a certified massage therapist with a certification in Shiatsu and Sotai. After 20 years in massage, my primary passion currently is in prenatal massage.
My mother and brother became vegetarians when I was 8 years old, bringing into my life over the next few years an early awareness of vegetarian, vegan and macrobiotic foods. I started working in food service at 15 and by my early 20’s was already a very adept cook, by the mid 90’s I was running a community culture kitchen working with chefs and cooks from all over the world. Embracing diversity and understanding health, wellness and food culture from around the world is definitely one of my deepest passions. Those were probably the three strongest aspects of my childhood, and early adult life that led to what I am and what I do today.
Around 15 years ago a massage client of mine found out that I was also a cook and began hiring me to personal chef for events, and later for his family. He had a strong commitment to eating organic food and found it hard to find cooks that would truly commit to an all-organic menu. Part of his frustration each year came from company travel and the lack of healthy food, wellness and care when on the road. Each year his company would travel to Florida for a major tradeshow, often being away for 8-12 days.
Each and every year he would come home sick, and have to spend a couple weeks recovering, as would many of his work colleagues. He had tried out any number of ideas for eating healthier on the road and never really found a functional solution.
After telling his co-owners about me, year after year, he finally talked them into trying out a new solution, and 11 years ago I went to Florida with them. The first year our solution was a full-suite hot breakfast, a lunch delivery and massage in the afternoons in their privacy booth. The company was thrilled! The other co-owners, initially dubious, were completely committed by the end. My ability to feed the Paleo, the Organic, the Vegetarian, and all other dietary concerns were met, the food was delicious and everyone felt substantially healthier.
Over the years this has evolved into a much larger endeavor, with a little backstory. By year 5 we had begun having a company party on the final night, the company found it so relaxing to stay home that they started talking about having more dinners, so year 6 we decided to look for different housing, conducive to dinner parties. Being the cook I took lead on the housing hunt and found a much-upgraded housing solution for the same cost (actually a little less) than the convention housing they had used for 15 years.
With a little extra effort, we had found quieter, darker, more relaxing and more luxurious housing for the same cost!
That year we added 2 dinners and the final party to our standard package. The revelations were tremendous, the added benefit of dinner ensuite meant that after a 10-12 hour day on the floor of the tradeshow, they could come home and have hot food waiting for them. The company would relax, have a drink, eat well, perhaps entertain a client and still be able to go to bed by 10 or 11 pm. The nights that they went to a restaurant meant sitting by 8:30, order by 9pm, getting the main course by 9:30/9: 45 pm, typically paying the bill close to 11 pm and getting home by 11:30pm, then of course unwinding, perhaps calling their husband or wife and having to get up again by 6 am!!
Our team would feed them by 7 pm or 7:30 pm depending on when they got home, and they would be free to sleep as early as 9 pm if they were exhausted. This was truly a game changer! Over the next few years, on request of the owners, we added a trivia night, a karaoke night, live music, some years we organize an outing or show, we have 2 other companies who typically house and eat with us and rarely does anyone go out to dinner. We have used this model to entertain clients, relax and unwind, deepen the company employee relationships, and best of all no one goes home sick or exhausted.
Growing the wellness concierge, food and hospitality aspect of this particular job and company led me down a path of research into worksite wellness and understanding more deeply what this type of investment brings back to companies. I think that overall there is not enough training and understanding of the true investment of wellness. I believe that we continue to prioritize time logged over productivity, even though in this day and age it is obvious that productivity should be winning. When we have more and more remote jobs and employees working jobs where the important final outcome is the content and/or the ability to be at the top of their game, why are we still willing to drive those workers into exhaustion, and end up lowering our outcomes?
Aside from corporate wellness, my deep passion is around food health, both in where the food is produced, how it is cooked, how it impacts our climate, our local commerce and so much more. I have worked with local farms, and permaculture teachers for the past few years, supporting, cooking and teaching around seasonal eating, hosting and cooking for farm to table dinner parties, cooking for weddings, and events that want to focus on the local farmers and the Boston area.
I love sourcing local foods and have had occasion to present on a menu, food health and farm to table awareness. This fall I will be teaching with the Boston Food Forest on local food and preparing the menu for the annual fundraiser.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Onsite Organic has been very successful with the companies we do work with, unfortunately, I ran into a roadblock when I tried to propagate the very idea of wellness on the road. A few years ago I was excited into expanding our business by a contact who I met at the Florida tradeshow. She worked with a number of Fortune 500 companies that traveled a lot and was absolutely sure they would be interested in a different way of supporting their employees on the road. She asked me to put together brochures and information to pass to a number of other companies, and I worked day and night on information, service, expanding our potential staff and a full suite of services.
Although she diligently followed through and highly recommended us to a number of companies, relatively little seemed to happen. I tried promoting this on LinkedIn, wrote blogs and advertising, and found those very few companies gave us more than a cursory glance. The only companies I was able to get contracts with were the ones who saw us in action directly, who perhaps ate our food or saw the impact of what we were able to do for the companies we were already working with. I wish I could tell you that this struggle is over, and I’m well aware that it is not.
Businesses are used to a standard and predictable way of traveling, and they tend to want to stay with tried and true. This continues to be a passion for me and one I would like to change. I know that as companies like Google, who have a huge perks program around massage, food and wellness, continue to set the precedent for other corporations and prove their programs, we stand a better chance of increasing awareness around worksite wellness.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Onsite Organic story. Tell us more about the business.
Onsite Organic offers quite an array of services. We specialize in creating a way for companies to travel and have health, wellness and ease on the road. We also organize work retreats, from lodging to food, private massage, yoga teachers and even have great resources for facilitators, drivers, musicians, almost anything a company might want for a work retreat or business trip.
In the Boston area, our network is vast. We easily have a network of dozens of healers, cooks from many cultural backgrounds, server staff, DJ’s, party and event organizers, decorators and more. Although our main love is farm to table and more relaxed events, we are skilled event planners and love working with people to create unique experiences.
Onsite Organic has prenatal massage and yoga teachers for baby showers, award-winning wedding bands and DJ’s for local weddings, we have cake designers, and carpenters for literally building a completely unique experience just about anywhere in the area. When we do work wellness days locally, we bring in a highly skilled chair and table massage therapists, always focusing on therapists with years of experience, we have a nutritionist and herbalist we have hired for food health awareness and we often cater for lunch and learn’s at companies throughout the greater Boston area.
I think what sets us apart from others is that we modify everything to the need to the particular client. I’ve never believed in any one model working for everyone. Each client has both a dietary, but also frequently a cultural background, that affects what kind of food they want, how much food they want, whether they are looking for hands-on or hands-off service, do they need privacy or would they like us to help serve? do they want music or entertainment? who are we representing culturally and ethnically? Each meal, each event and each service are modified to the client.
I also would say we stand out by using fresh ingredients. In general, I tend towards the use of fresh herbs and I actually grow a lot of my own organic herbs just for this reason. I use dried spices when they make the most sense, and green herbs like basil, parsley, thyme and oregano show their best flavor when they are fresh. I avoid using the top 12 unless they are organic, meaning I stay away from high pesticide foods, and as a general rule, I stay with food fares that are not too heavily nouveau cuisine. I have learned from experience that when cooking for larger groups it is important that the majority of your clients need to be interested in eating what you are serving.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I don’t put a lot of stock into luck, and if I was to answer this question more fully I would look at it more as direct Karma. I am an involved community organizer, a delegate on my local Democratic ward, an organizer of a local community festival, I am involved in community meetings, know my local businesses, I help neighbors, vote in every election, stay in touch with my clients and work hard as a business person.
Putting a lot of stock in luck is often a lazy answer to not wanting to work your way up one step at a time. At one point in my life, I was a dreamer who thought I could come up with an idea and it would magically happen. At this point in my life, I have dreamed, created, thought about each step, and worked to make that one happen to move to the next.
Part of what makes me an effective planner and organizer is exactly that diligence and discipline. I believe in dreams, and I believe that being involved in the world around you is going to increase your chances of experiencing “luck” or more accurately direct karma, meaning people who put energy out are more likely to get energy back.
Contact Info:
- Address: 33 Dalrymple Street
- Website: www.onsiteorganic.com, www.prenatalmassageboston.com
- Phone: 6175223344
- Email: onsiteorganic@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onsiteorganic/
Image Credit:
Jovielle Gers Photography, Peter Paradise Photography
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